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  The Canterville Ghost

  Oscar Wilde

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  Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was born on the 16th October 1854 in Dublin, Ireland.  The son of Dublin intellectuals Oscar proved himself an outstanding classicist at Trinity College and then at Oxford.  
   
  Wilde then moved to London and its fashionable cultural and social circles.  With his biting wit, flamboyant dress, and glittering conversation, Wilde became one of the most well-known personalities of his day. 
   
  His only novel, ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ was published in 1890 and he then moved on to writing for the stage with ‘Salome’ in 1891.  His society comedies were enormous hits and turned him into one of the most successful writers of late Victorian London. 
   
  Whilst his masterpiece, ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’, was on stage in London, Wilde had the Marquess of Queensberry, the father of his lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, prosecuted for libel.  The trial unearthed evidence that caused Wilde to drop his charges and led to his own arrest and trial for gross indecency. He was convicted and imprisoned for two years hard labour. It was to break him. 
   
  On release he left for France. There he wrote his last work, ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’ in 1898.  He died destitute in Paris at the age of forty-six sipping champagne a friend had brought with the line ‘Alas I am dying beyond my means’.

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  Deep Black Sea

  David M. Salkin

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  “Science fiction at its best, a realistic tale of exploration and danger, written by a man who knows the details of deep-sea exploration firsthand.” —Ben Bova, Hugo Award-wining author 
   
  With a crew of seven, the Challenger sea lab submerges three miles below the waves for a one-year mission to study the hidden world of the deep black sea. How is it that sea animals can live and reproduce in water that should boil them on the thermal vents known as “black smokers?” Superheated water that is full of toxins and heavy metals and contains almost no oxygen should be void of life on planet Earth—and yet it is teeming with it. The answer to the puzzle lies in the bacteria. 
   
  Researcher Ted Bell is a NASA scientist with his own agenda: getting humans to Mars. When he purposefully infects a member of the crew in an attempt to harness the power of the Deinococcus radiodurans bacteria, he quickly loses control and unleashes a terrifying new creature. His botched experiment quickly becomes a battle for survival—three miles below the surface.  
   
  With the research vessel nearing catastrophic failure, and terrifying alien life forms running wild through the ship, the crew must figure out a way to battle something that is no longer human while trying desperately to reach the surface alive.  
   
  “Crichton at his best is the main author who comes to mind as a comparable influence when reading Deep Black Sea . . . The informative and fascinating science that fills each page really elevates this book to a higher grade.” —Horror Novel Reviews

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  Little Women

  Louisa May Alcott

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  Generations of readers young and old, male and female, have fallen in love with the March sisters of Louisa May Alcott's most popular and enduring novel, Little Women. Here are talented tomboy and author-to-be Jo, tragically frail Beth, beautiful Meg, and romantic, spoiled Amy, united in their devotion to each other and their struggles to survive in New England during the Civil War.It is no secret that Alcott based Little Women on her own early life. While her father, the freethinking reformer and abolitionist Bronson Alcott, hobnobbed with such eminent male authors as Emerson, Thoreau, and Hawthorne, Louisa supported herself and her sisters with "woman's work," including sewing, doing laundry, and acting as a domestic servant. But she soon discovered she could make more money writing. Little Women brought her lasting fame and fortune, and far from being the "girl's book" her publisher requested, it explores such timeless themes as love and death, war and peace, the conflict between personal ambition and family responsibilities, and the clash of cultures between Europe and America.

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  The Resurrection Man's Legacy -...

  Dale Bailey

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  A breathtaking collection of wonders and horrors—including robotic surrogate parents and zombie voters—from a new acknowledged master of darkest fantasy Whether speculating on an all-too-possible future or plumbing the stygian depths of supernatural evil and human degradation, Dale Bailey’s award-winning short fiction has been justifiably compared to the work of some of the true giants in the field—Ray Bradbury, Stephen King, and Theodore Sturgeon, to name but a few. In this first collection of astonishing stories, the acclaimed author of the modern horror masterworks The Fallen and House of Bones demonstrates his remarkable range with tales that exhilarate, terrify, and touch the soul. A young boy comes of age on a secluded farm that grows a particularly grisly crop. The dead rise up to cast their ballots in a close presidential election. An assassin plots his next kill from inside the body of someone frighteningly close to the victim. An African American census taker discovers a hidden bayou town where time has stopped at a nightmarish point in history. Bailey takes readers inside the tents of a circus of shadows and explores an expectant father’s dark and terrible legacy for his unborn child. This extraordinary collection runs the gamut from fantasy to horror, from science fiction to heartbreaking reality, speaking in voices, old and young, that brilliantly capture the light and the darkness of their ingeniously imagined worlds. Includes the Nebula Award–nominated novelette, “The Resurrection Man’s Legacy.”

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  Brooklyn Noir

  Pete Hamill, Pearl Abraham,...

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  This award-winning anthology of original crime fiction exploring Brooklyn’s many enclaves features new stories by Pete Hamill, Maggie Estep and others.New York’s punchiest borough asserts its criminal legacy with this collection of stories from some of today’s best writers. Brooklyn Noir moves from Coney Island to Bedford-Stuyvesant to Bay Ridge to Red Hook to Bushwick to Sheepshead Bay to Park Slope and far deeper, into the heart of Brooklyn’s historical and criminal largesse. Each contributor offers a new story set in a distinct neighborhood. Many of the stories that first appeared in this volume have garnered critical acclaim, including Pete Hamill’s Edgar Award finalist “The Book Signing”; Ellen Miller’s Pushcart Prize finalist “Practicing”; Pearl Abraham’s Shamus Award finalist “Hasidic Noir”; Arthur Nersesian’s Anthony Award finalist “Hunter/Trapper”; and Thomas Morrissey’s Robert L. Fish Memorial Award-winner “Can’t Catch Me”.Brooklyn Noir also features brand-new stories by Nelson George, Sidney Offit, Neal Pollack, Ken Bruen, Maggie Estep, Kenji Jasper, Adam Mansbach, C.J. Sullivan, Chris Niles, Norman Kelley, Nicole Blackman, Tim McLoughlin, Lou Manfredo, Luciano Guerriero, and Robert Knightley.

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  Who killed Charlie Winpole?

  Ernest Bramah

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  Ernest Bramah (1868-1942) was an English author of 21 novels and numerous short stories and features. His humorous works have been ranked with Jerome K. Jerome and W. W. Jacobs, his detective stories with Conan Doyle, his politico-science fiction with H. G. Wells, and his supernatural stories with Algernon Blackwood.In his stories of detection, Bramah hit on the idea of a blind detective, Max Carrados, whose triumphs are all the more amazing because of his disability.In Who Killed Charlie Winpole?, Max Carrados investigates what initially appears to be a tragic case of a teenage boy who is accidentally poisoned by a toxic toadstool mistaken for an edible mushroom. Within a few days, the boy's uncle has been arrested and charged with murder. But Carrados is not satisfied by this explanation either and embarks on a highly irregular kind of investigation.

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